Mining is the process of removing a desired in-ground material or mineral from a ground volume for further processing. Ground volumes include various materials such as overburden, ore (i.e. material including a mineral), caprock material, or still other types of material. Desirable materials may include precious metals, oil, gas, and other mined substances. Desirable materials located along a ground surface may be extracted from the ground volume without removing additional material (e.g., overburden, caprock material, etc.). However, desirable materials located below a ground surface may require operators to remove the additional material before extracting the desirable material.
Mining operations traditionally remove material using various methods. By way of example, a mining operation may utilize a blasting method to break free large amounts of material from the surrounding ground volume. However, blasting techniques may involve safety risks and may unintentionally break free additional material. Some mining operations employ cutting machines that work directly on an exposed rock face. However, these machines are comparatively slow and costly to operate and difficult to use in some circumstances. Other mining operations may utilize a rope saw to extract blocks of material from an above or below-ground mine. Such a rope saw may include a plurality of sections having an embedded abrasive (e.g., diamond, etc.) that each remove a small amount of material as the section passes over the material. Operators may cycle the saw within pre-drilled holes cut laterally into the material and maintain tension on the rope saw to cut the material into blocks. However, the necessity of laterally pre-drilled holes may not allow rope saws to extract some configurations of subterranean material.